McAfee hands channel boss midmarket reins

Mid-market sales teams will now report into channel head honcho Alex Thurber

Jill Henry: This will increase the mid-market opportunity for partners

McAfee has put global channel head Alex Thurber in charge of its mid-market sales strategy.

All mid-market sales teams, including the EMEA team in Cork, will now report into Thurber, who joined the anti-virus giant from Cisco last summer.

The re-organisation follows on from chief executive Dave DeWalt’s pledge to grow SME and mid-market sales beyond the $1bn mark, matching the scale of its much larger corporate and consumer businesses.

Jill Henry, UK and Ireland channel director at McAfee, said the re-organisation would increase the midmarket opportunity for partners.

“The mid-market and the channel are intrinsically linked at Mcafee,” she said. “They were already run closely together but now we have been even bolder. It a huge part of our business and that is where we see the channel has an enormous value."

In the UK, mid-market covers everything between the top 100-150 UK accounts down to transactions above $1,500, said Henry.

The top 100 UK clients will have a direct dialogue with McAfee, but Henry stressed that partners are not being cut out of the loop at the top end.

“We are a partner-centric company, in contrast to a lot of other vendors, and we expect to do all business in conjunction with a partner,” she said.